"Underlying it all is impunity": Honduran Disillusion with Politicians

"Underlying it all is impunity, and a rift between the government and its citizens caused by the lack of solutions to (the country's) problems."

So says historian Marvin Barahona in a story by Thelma Mejía published January 30 on IPS News.

The "it" here: new polling data indicating a continued erosion of the Honduran public's evaluation of the national government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. Compared a year earlier (based on polling in November), the Lobo Sosa government was rated 4.6, down from 5.11, on a scale of 10.

Stop to consider that neither of these is a very high level of approval. Then let's go on to consider what that trend portends for national politics in Honduras, as the country gears up for primary elections in the fall. Here, the article notes that the continued erosion of people's sense of safety is a major factor in the falling grade given the Lobo Sosa administration:

Of the respondents polled ... 67 percent say the police have ties to organised crime, and 72 percent say they do not feel safe with the current police force.

The military troops that have been called in patrol the streets are somewhat better perceived, with 46 percent of respondents saying they trust them.

What does it mean when 46% positive is considered a good number?

Barahona added to the poor security situation a second factor, both of which he argued can be traced to impunity:

Another aspect of this crisis is corruption, Barahona said. He recalled how government officials have been implicated in rigged electric power and basic grain import contracts, procurement contracts awarded without tender, and other irregularities.

Since the coup of 2009, we have traced one economic transaction after another that fits this description. Indeed, back in summer 2009 one of the most remarkable things we noted was that the Honduran Congress, immediately after passing its illegal acts to replace the legally elected president, wasted no time getting down to the business of carving up potential assets like the spoils of conquest.

The ever intelligent Mejia adds some context that really is critical, and should be understood by all those who reflexively oppose revision of the Honduran constitution's framework for one term presidencies. She quotes Barahona, again, noting that Lobo Sosa's effective ability to govern is over:

Lobo has arrived at the halfway mark of his term "with hardly any room for manoeuvring and his administration's image will be even more tarnished in May when primary campaigns for the candidates of next year's general election begin," ...

In Honduras, presidents traditionally have two years to actually govern. During the third year, pre-election campaigns wear down the administration, as most contenders are executive branch officers and acting legislators who hope to continue in the government in the following term.

This year's campaign season starts out, according to the polling data, with less than 60% support for the two traditional parties. But the 40% of Hondurans who no longer support the Liberal or National Party are split among six alternatives:

Honduras has five [previously existing] political parties, which will be joined by three new ones in the next elections. Two of these new parties are left-wing and the third party is a right-wing group formed by retired military officers.

Adrienne Pine, whose commentary on this article brought it to our attention, notes that the surveys cited have drawn passionate and, she writes, "anti-intellectual" responses from adherents of the new Libre party, angered by the empirical finding that the nascent party has 2.8% support. She notes that these critics (not including Mel Zelaya, the leader of the newly formed party) display a troubling but historically not unexpected attitude toward the people, what she describes as:

a vanguardist philosophy of "you can't handle the truth" toward the "masses" (be they the uneducated or rural, in complete agreement with golpista theories of Honduran "culture") without intellectually honest efforts to uncover truths that may contradict the dogmas of the Left.

There were substantive debates in the resistance about whether entering electoral politics, or remaining a popular movement outside of that context, was a better way to advance the progressive aims of the indigenous, popular, rural, women's, and African-descendant groups that form the moral core of the resistance. Skeptics of the entry into electoral politics will be watching to see how Libre and its leadership acts, to assess whether it can depart from the common reality of Honduran electoral politics.

The reaction to the new polling data is not a good sign. The polling was conducted by two highly respected Jesuit organizations, Honduras' Reflection, Research and Communication Team (ERIC) and UCA, the "José Simeón Cañas" Central American University in El Salvador.

Honduras desperately needs leadership. What will be on exhibit for almost all of the next two years, if history serves as a model, will be exaggerated posturing. Adding to that posturing from the left is no progress at all.

"Every Stone in its Place": Marvin Barahona

Why does cultural policy and historical knowledge matter in a place like Honduras?

Honduran historian Marvin Barahona, author of a number of books about Honduran identity and 20th century history, provides some answers in a long presentation of Dario Euraque's recently published book El golpe de Estado del 28 de junio de 2009, el Patrimonio Cultural y la Identidad Nacional ("The coup d'Etat of the 28th of June of 2009, Cultural Patrimony, and National Identity").

Barahona's essay is too long to translate in its entirety here. But it is worth citing how Euraque's important work is being received in Honduran intellectual circles, and why it is, more than a commentary on the coup, a critical work in Honduran historiography.

Barahona starts by saying he is resisting the temptation to either begin with the Honduran Congress discussing the Ruins of Copan at the beginning of the 20th century, or with words drawn from a magazine commenting on "the visit to the Copan Archaeological Park in January 2010 by the president of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti Bain, invited by the Asociación Copán to show him the bounties of the site."

He then goes on:

The underworld of the tunnels designed by generations of archaeologists seem to have been waiting, in the last three decades, for a retinue like this, that emerged from the underworld of politics, as knowledgeable experts of the most ancient caverns of politics and as architects of the latest coup d'Etat that shocked the national conscience by its historical anachronism, and left a trail of instability and chaos in the governability of the country.

What links these two subjects-- archaeology and the de facto regime? Read on:

For that, if it were possible, I would want to extend an historic bridge between the most distant past and the most recent past, to link deeds that at first glance don't seem related, such as the use of official culture to make the collective consciousness forget its past and the abuse of the State to favor the interests of a minority to whom culture and the past has been of interest only as merchandise for tourists, as a business in which they could enrich themselves.

Barahona, following the lead of Euraque, identifies the commodification of national culture as yet one more regrettable product of the reactionary politics of contemporary Honduras.

The trajectory is complicated, but it includes the elevation of one part of the precolumbian Honduran past-- that of the Maya of western Honduras-- to stand for the entire nation, a process Euraque called "mayanization". In this process, Euraque's book shows that all political parties in Honduras and academics, both national and foreign, have played a part. The result is a failure to connect most contemporary Hondurans with a deep past of their own:

And when we recognize this incredible disproportion between the many books written about the Ruins of Copan and the few studies about the peoples and cultures that are still alive, such as the Tolupan or the Pech, the Tawahkas and the Miskitos, the Lenca and the Garifuna, then it is required to think that the cultural policies of the State are as unjust as the form in which national income is distributed, dedicated in the last two centuries to benefit a few wealthy families, to the detriment of thousands of meztizo, Indian and black families that don't fit in the official culture and still less in the economy and the national budget.

As Barahona notes, Euraque's book argues that the antidote to this poison lies in

a new cultural policy of the State, concretized in projects to rescue the cultural diversity of the peoples that give it flesh, to rescue national history in local archives, to give to archaeology its rightful place, to reconstruct the characteristic features of popular culture and provide communities with people qualified to recover local historical memory and that of the population marginalized by official culture.

Barahona argues that

the goal of giving to Honduras a democratic, inclusive, participatory cultural policy capable of responding to the challenges of the world today, continues to be a valid effort and an inescapable responsibility of the State and society...

Therefore it won't suffice, in the present day, to insist on mayanizing Honduras to sell to foreign tourists the bounties of our past, nor less will it do to continue privileging the value of the stones of the distant past...

And even putting each stone in its place, there remains no doubt that Honduras needs this new cultural policy to avoid letting the study of its archaeology continue in the hands of the same foreign institutions as at the beginning of the 20th century..

The alignment of archaeology, especially foreign archaeology, with conservative politics, in other words, may not be new but it is not to be supported in the future.

Knowledge of history, Barahona concludes, is indispensable, and democratization of history continues to be critical for Honduras:

every effort to reconstruct the national identity, including all its protagonists without exclusions of any kind, implies a large scale effort to re-elaborate national thought, to put it into action and place it at the level of the requirements of our time.

But the final words should go to Darío Euraque, whose summary account of his motivation in writing a memoir of his experiences during the coup d'Etat has also been published now:

Today there exists a new government in Honduras: nonetheless, the authorities imposed on the management of the Institute of Anthropology and History by means of the coup d'Etat, lacking in experience or intellectual vision of our culture, continue in their offices. I suspect that they continue violating the cultural policy that I promoted since 2006 in coordination with the Secretariat of Culture. Not only the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras suffered, but also our National Identity, the fragile institutionality of the State, and ironically even the support given to cultural tourism promoted by the Institute of Tourism and Chamber of Tourism of Honduras decreases.

“Alta es la noche y Morazán vigila.”